2 suspected Al-Badr men seek discharge on basis of CBI report

Two persons, arrested in 2006 on suspicion of being linked to Al-Badr, on Monday sought their release before a Delhi court on the ground that the CBI had filed a closure report in the case giving them a clean chit.

In their argument in the court of Additional Sessions Judge S K Gautam, the counsel for accused -- Moarif Qamar and Irshad Ali -- submitted that the CBI's probe had already established that they were implicated and illegally detained by Delhi Police's Special Cell -- a specialised anti-terrorist unit.

"Both the persons were acting as Intelligence Bureau's informers. The police arrested them on February 9, 2006 the day when a notice of their being missing was published in a newspaper on a complaint lodged with Bhajanpura police station on December 22, 2005," Suffian Siddiqui, counsel for Ali said.

"If such is the fate of persons working for government agencies, then God save the country," he rued.

The police had even failed to make the driver and conductor of Jammu and Kashmir State Transport Corporation's bus, on which they were allegedly travelling, as witnesses in their chargesheet against the duo, he submitted, adding that the police could allegedly recover tickets from them only on their third search.